Saturday, October 21, 2017

Should we regulate and control gambling, or should we continue with most of it being illegal? Today the federal Professional Amateur Sports Protection Act prohibits any states – except Nevada – from regulating or controlling gambling. Maybe the federal law was passed with good intentions, because the government was logically concerned by the prospect of athletic competitors being bribed to “throw” their matches. But the law of unintended consequences once again prevails because not only has this law ushered in an enormous Black Market, it actually has made it more difficult to detect and prosecute corruption. How so? Because illegal betting makes it much more difficult to detect betting patterns, which increases the ability to fix athletic contests. And now eSports gambling is upon us, where people bet on online video game competitions, and already one player has been found to have made large amounts of money by betting against himself and then throwing his match. As of now it is estimated that this business garners about $700 million in profits, which is predicted to explode to $1.5 billion by 2020. The facts are that people have always gambled – always have and always will! So the only practical question is: shall gambling be controlled under the law, or by people outside of the law?

Going back to our roots, there is simply nothing in our Constitution that allows the federal government to pre-empt any state from governing gambling within its own boundaries. (As has been asked before in this series – show of hands – how many of you believe that the federal government has all of the answers?) In addition, all studies, as well as common sense, show that fans who bet on a sports event are more engaged if they have placed a bet on the outcome. As a result, betting is rampant and normal virtually everywhere, and illegal betting has pushed tens of billions of dollars into the shadow economy – all of which is uncontrolled and untaxed. So bringing gambling back under the law would take away lots of money from the criminal element, provide tax money for local governments, and allow investigators the heightened ability to detect fraud in sports. Thus Liberty in allowing adults to engage in legal gambling would once again provide greater benefits to society at large than government restrictions and prohibitions.

Judge Jim Gray (Ret.)
2012 Libertarian candidate for Vice President,
along with Governor Gary Johnson as the candidate for President

Please forward this on to your circle of friends for their consideration and to further the discussion. And by the way, these columns are now on Facebook and LinkedIn at judgejimgray, Twitter at judgejimgrayOAI, and wordpress at judgejimgray@wordpress.com. Please visit these sites for past editions, and do your part to spread the word about the importance of Liberty!

Saturday, October 14, 2017

Recently, I received the following information from a recipient of these weekly 2 Paragraphs. She had, in turn, received the information from www.UrbanCure.org., which is a religious-based, free market news organization for the black community. From my standpoint, this information is probably accurate, but even if it isn’t, it describes the pitfalls, unfairness and extremely expensive nature of our nation’s welfare system. Here is what we received:

For a guy and his girlfriend with two kids all you have to do is follow these proven steps:1. Don’t marry her!
2. Always use your mom’s address to get your mail.
3. The guy buys a house.
4. The guy rents out the house to his girlfriend with his 2 kids.
5. Section 8 will pay the girlfriend $900 a month for a 3 bedroom home.
6. Girlfriend signs up for Obamacare so guy doesn’t have to pay for family health insurance.
7. Girlfriend gets to go to college for free being a single mother.
8. Girlfriend gets $600 a month for food stamps.
9 Girlfriend gets a free cell phone.
10. Girlfriend gets free utilities.
11. Guy moves into home, but continues to use mom’s address for his mail.
12. Girlfriend claims one kid and guy claims the other kid on their tax forms. Now both get to claim head of household for a $1800 credit.
13. Girlfriend gets $1,800 a month disability for being “crazy” or having a “bad back,” etc., and never has to work again.

This plan is perfectly legal and is being executed now by millions of people. On the other hand, an honest married couple with a stay-at-home mom yields $0 dollars. But an unmarried couple with stay-at-home mom using this approach each year nets $21,600 disability + $10,800 free housing + $6,000 free Obamacare + $6,000 free food + $4,800 free utilities + $6,000 Pell Grant money to spend + $12,000 a year in college tuition free from Pell Grant + $8,800 tax benefit for being a single mother, which equals $75,000 a year in benefits!

Fully as harmfully, there are no incentives for recipients to get a job or otherwise improve their lives. And that is why welfare has been a trap for people for generations! Instead, adopting the changes to the income tax system proposed several times in this 2 Paragraphs in combination with the Safety Net would both encourage honesty and always provide incentives for people to earn the extra dollar. That would be beneficial for everyone, and would completely replace all other welfare programs – as long as allowances were made for those with special needs. Under this approach, no one would pay any income tax on their first $30,000 per year. But there would be a stipend of $15,000 per year for everyone in our country who is over 18, here legally and earns no money – probably broken into monthly payments of $1,250. But, all importantly, the recipients would lose 50 cents from the stipend for every dollar earned up to $30,000 per year, so they would always have an incentive to earn the extra dollar. (By the way, this would also materially reduce the homeless problem, because the free market would quickly provide inexpensive room and board facilities which could be paid from that stipend.) So what do you think? How does the Safety Net approach compare with the Welfare programs?

Judge Jim Gray (Ret.)
2012 Libertarian candidate for Vice President,
along with Governor Gary Johnson as the candidate for President

Please forward this on to your circle of friends for their consideration and to further the discussion. And by the way, these columns are now on Facebook and LinkedIn at judgejimgray, Twitter at judgejimgrayOAI, and wordpress at judgejimgray@wordpress.com. Please visit these sites for past editions, and do your part to spread the word about the importance of Liberty!

Thursday, October 5, 2017

As I said in the first sentence of the introduction of my book on judging*, “the best decision I ever made in my life was choosing my parents.” And, of course, I have been the beneficiary of that so-called choice ever since. Obviously, I could have been born to a single mother with AIDS in Nigeria. But I believe that my good fortune has given me the moral obligation to help those people who did not “choose” quite so well. So all of this gets me around to one of my favorite reminders, which is “Who says life is fair?” My children were raised on that saying (just ask them!). Socrates was forced to drink hemlock. Tchaikovsky was forced to commit suicide when it was discovered publicly that he was gay. Many more innocent men, women and children are also randomly killed and otherwise harmed by terrorists, hurricanes, earthquakes or diseases. Sometimes a baseball player hits a sharp line drive that is caught for an out, and other times he duffs one that falls for a double. No, life simply is not always fair.

Nevertheless, even taking these external forces into account, each one of us is in charge of our responses to those forces, how we think and act, and the choices we make. In other words, falling back on the lament that we are victims of whatever has befallen us is a losing proposition. But one of the things that does work is Liberty, because how we respond to what befalls us is up to us. People who live their lives holding grudges, claiming they are victims, or adopting any other approaches centered around the concept of “Woe is Me,” are self-defeating. Of course, most good people often help others when they are in need, and that is a good thing. But those who play and rely upon victimization involve themselves in a losing proposition. Instead, we are the captains of our own ships, and it is only we who bear the consequences for the life we lead, the choices we make and the attitude we take. And, if you think about it, we shouldn’t want it any other way.

Judge Jim Gray (Ret.)
2012 Libertarian candidate for Vice President,
along with Governor Gary Johnson as the candidate for President

Please forward this on to your circle of friends for their consideration and to further the discussion. And by the way, these columns are now on Facebook and LinkedIn at judgejimgray, Twitter at judgejimgrayOAI, and wordpress at judgejimgray@wordpress.com. Please visit these sites for past editions, and do your part to spread the word about the importance of Liberty!

* Wearing the Robe: The Art and Responsibilities of Judging in Today’s Courts (Square One Press, 2009)

The whole issue of the minimum wage brings in a conundrum: we see people working for wages that would not provide enough revenue to pay for an apartment, and think it wrong. But we also see that the more laws we pass to rectify that situation, the deeper the problems become. So what’s to be done? The answer is to listen to Dr. Milton Friedman, who said that we should judge programs by their results instead of their intentions. In that regard, the fact is that when the government mandates that workers’ wages be increased, it obviously makes that labor more expensive. And the result of that is for many employers to lay off some employees and replace them by automation (think self check-out machines at stores like Home Depot and self-ordering kiosks at fast food stores like McDonald’s). For example, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that nationally increasing the minimum wages even to the level of $10.10 per hour would cause 500,000 workers to lose their jobs. And for the employees that remain, employers will also try to reduce their number of hours of work – particularly for overtime. As a result, minimum wage laws actually result in victories for robots and defeats for most employees. (Sorry, the callous fact is that in today’s world some workers are simply not worth $10.10 per hour.) And these are only just some of the problems that result. Thus, almost literally, the only good thing that results from minimum wage laws is that legislators get to feel better about themselves.

So what is a better approach? Liberty. Let the free market control the process by allowing employers and employees to negotiate their employment contracts – of course with allowances for safety in the workplace and for the courts to enforce the agreements reached. That will result in increased employment, which will overall be beneficial because it is healthier for society to have, for example, 100 people working for $10 per hour than 65 people working for $15 per hour. Then if society concludes that there should be a Safety Net of minimum income that everyone legally in our country over 18 years of age should be receiving, let government establish one. Again as Dr. Friedman said, the difference between the wealthy and the poor is that the wealthy have more money. So give the poor some money – up to a basic amount (with allowances made for those with special needs). This would probably be revenue neutral, because we could repeal all other welfare programs, along with the enormously expensive bureaucracy needed to administer them. But, critically, there should always be an incentive for people to earn the extra dollar. This would result in better situations all around: greater employment, greater flexibility, less complexity, an enormous reduction in homelessness (because the free market would quickly create low-cost room and board facilities for the homeless who received their monthly stipends), lower government expenses, and incentives for people to improve themselves – which is not at all true for today’s welfare recipients. So, yet again, Liberty works!!

Judge Jim Gray (Ret.)
2012 Libertarian candidate for Vice President,
along with Governor Gary Johnson as the candidate for President

Please forward this on to your circle of friends for their consideration and to further the discussion. And by the way, these columns are now on Facebook and LinkedIn at judgejimgray, Twitter at judgejimgrayOAI, and wordpress at judgejimgray@wordpress.com. Please visit these sites for past editions, and do your part to spread the word about the importance of Liberty!

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About Judge Jim Gray

Cited on numerous occasions for his work in the areas of both social reform and civic philanthropy, Judge James P. Gray currently presides over the civil trial calendar for the Superior Court of Orange County.
Judge Gray was appointed to the Santa Ana Municipal Court in 1983 by Governor George Deukmejian, and in 1989, Deukmejian elevated Gray to his post with the Superior Court.
Throughout his 29-year career within the legal and judicial community, Jim Gray has not only donated hundreds of hours of volunteer time to existing community service-oriented activities, he also has created and implemented a number of innovative programs of his own, each one a success story in itself.